Northwestern Publishing House

In the last article, we talked about the importance of slowing down our teaching in Bible class. Part of the reason I tend to rush through my material is that I’ve already grappled with the text and am eager to share what I’ve learned with the class. The easiest way to do this is simply to lecture.

However, at a 2013 Summer Quarter course, Pastor Michael Quandt (then professor of education) offered that simply telling your class everything you learned in the course of your preparation is behaving like the character from Saturday Night Live called “Pre-chew Charlie.” Pre-chew Charlie owned a restaurant in which his waiters specialized in “softening up” steaks and other foods for restaurant goers by first chewing it for them. Gross!

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome young man pursued by many young women. Because he rejected all their advances, he angered the gods. They decided he needed to be punished. His punish­ment was to fall in love with his image in a reﬂecting pool and thus never attain his heart’s desire. The story is a myth, but narcissism—loving oneself above all else—lives on. Continue reading →

Consider this three-part prayer Philip Melanchthon prayed with his colleagues:

“We shall commend our cause, therefore, to Christ, who some time will judge these controversies, and we beseech Him to look upon the afflicted and scattered churches, and to bring them back to godly and perpetual concord.” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Preface, paragraph 19)

Do you ever find yourself speaking at a rapid-fire rate trying to finish the Bible study before time is up? It’s a regular challenge for me. That’s why I appreciate the advice I once received: Don’t talk faster—cover less. Just because you are speaking doesn’t guarantee that people are listening. Especially if you are talking faster than the students can follow. Continue reading →

It’s hard to imagine that a child in grade school could be depressed. These years should be ﬁlled with friends, sleepovers, sports, and other fun activities. Can a child actually be depressed? According to some esti­mates, about 5 percent of school-aged children experi­ence clinical depression. Continue reading →

In Romans 13:11, Paul reminds you, "The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." But how do we open our eyes from our sleep? What will secure us from our own nightmares of ignorance and sin? How do we prepare for our salvation?

This article by Pastor John A. Vieths from Forward in Christ (Volume 103, Number 7, July 2016), encourages you to find security in God's promises and love.

Has the ministry of our called workers changed over the past few decades? Perhaps it has in some ways.

We certainly live in a broken world. That’s not new. It has been broken from the time Adam and Eve coveted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, refusing to trust God. Abel’s blood, soaking into the earth, testified to just how broken the world was even then. To this broken world God promised a Savior. Throughout the centuries, his words of promise have provided the foundation upon which his church has been built and the glue that holds this broken world together.

The importance of giving adult students the opportunity to apply what they have learned is one of the assumptions of current andragogy. If we agree that adults learn in order to solve problems, then it seems reasonable to not only teach them biblical principles, to not only convince them that the principle will benefit them, but to also give them a chance to practice the principle before they head back to work on Monday.

Northwestern Publishing House exists to deliver biblically sound Christ-centered resources within the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) and those throughout the world. With God's help, our vision is to be the premier resource for quality Lutheran materials that are faithful to the Scriptures, both today and into the future.